Two new restaurants, Lincoln Road's SushiSamba and new import Duck & Waffle (the second one serves modern 'rustic' British fare) are coming to a new building on the Miami River, which is being considered Phase II of Melo Group's Flagler on the River and was designed to look like lobster traps. As for the looks of the place, the rendering above, which is from Miami Today and likely current, looks much less like said lobster traps than the two renderings below, from The Next Miami. Too bad those are the more attractive ones.

Unity on the Bay, the large, uber-inclusive, church in Edgewater with a fabulous chunk of real estate, wants to sell most of its parking lot, Curbed has heard. Unity was, at one point, in talks with two developers—on of which was Melo—Curbed hears, to purchase about two-thirds of the congregation's large surface parking lot along 22nd Street. Both, however, have dropped out of talks, and now Unity's looking for a new deep-pocketed buyer.

The gap in the middle of the Margaret Pace Park adjacent wall of condo towers is finally being filled by a new offering by Melo Group, called Aria on the Bay. And it ain't half bad.

Designed by Arquitectonica rather than one of Melo's usual go-to designers, like Itec Design (who are much maligned, we might add, by entities as varying as the Miami Development Review board and this blog), renderings show a scalloped facade of glass balconies, stonework on the lower floors, and a sweeping circular staircase in the lobby. The building will have multiple pools, including what are called 'sunrise' and 'sunset' pools (increasingly common these days actually), and a kiddie pool, a game room, a screening room, a barbecue area and various other indoor and outdoor spaces for residents. And, although the brochure that exMiami dug up has renderings of the unit interiors, floor plans are still MIA as well as specifications. Let's hope they're nice.